Is it me, or is this game really hard?

C

chuft

First time out of the vault
Hello all,

I am a big fan of Fallout and Fallout 2. I have tried my hand at Fallout Tactics, using the individual turn-based mode, and gotten as far as Jefferson but at that point it just seemed too difficult to continue. Unlike the two earlier games, I seem to still be in leather armor and using rifles by the time I encounter mutants using machine guns and rocket launchers. Sooner or later some team members get blown to pieces the first time someone shoots at them and I have to start the mission over. There seems no way to exit the area to get reinforcements or more equipment if things go sour, nor can my guys use the big guns the muties drop when I kill them. The enemy weapons seem much too powerful for the kind of armor I am finding and my weapons are pretty weak compared to what I had to fight these kinds of enemies in the earlier games.

Am I doing something wrong? I seem to spend hours crawling around to avoid being seen, using my two or three sniper characters to try to aim for the eyes at long range (of enemies I can detect) while the rest of the squad just hides to avoid getting killed, but sooner or later I get surprised by an enemy I didn't see and they blow a squad member away with a much more powerful weapon than I seem to have access to. Thanks.
 
Unless you're playing on insane I can't imagine you having too much difficulty with it. Hard is a little hard, but with a decent squad/equipment/brain this game was never THAT challenging. Granted muties are kinda tough until you've looted a couple of their SAWs and then you can go toe to toe pretty easily.

If you're just salvaging armor you find in missions then ya you might be underarmored but IIRC by the first mutant mission 4/6 of your guys should have metal armor and the other 2 can get it shortly. If you really need some extra damage resist thats what psycho is for. Lifegiver is a very good perk-I recommend saving a perk so you can get 2 ranks of it at lvl 12-more hp is always a good thing.

Your guys not being able to use the mutants weapons most likely leads me to believe you have a squad where nobody is above 6 ST. If thats the case you probably have no big gunners either. If you do have people with big guns tagged and developed but under 6 ST either get the weapons handling perk or use a buffout. Muties may seem tough but do remember that most of them have low PE/IN/AG, which leads them to make them rather bad shooters-low AP, bad range modifiers, and low BG skills. For the most part they just seem intimidating. Still, respect any mutie wielding a browning. Here's a tip-small guns aren't really gonna cut it that well against mutants. You're gonna want at least 3 big guns guys of your own who have over 100 in BG skills by St. Louis. Sniper rifles will do okay against unarmored mutants but on those with armor you really need big guns to take them down at any reasonable speed. Jax and Brian woulda been good guys to take at start-build up their small guns a little (125% easily sufficient to take out raiders/beastlords) and then start putting points into big guns and you'd be set by the time the mutants rolled around. Since you're already there though, best just to grab existing big gunners like Max, Alice, Stoma, Stein, etc...your snipers can still contribute, but its gonna be big guns that take them down.

As a general rule of thumb FT is divided into a small guns stage, a big guns stage, and a energy weapons stage. SG against raiders/beastlords, BG against mutants, and EW against robots. You're gonna want at least half the squad using these weapons against these enemies. SG can still be modestly effective against mutants (sniper rifle, burst shotgun in close quarters), against robots (guass, electric shotgun shells, grenade launcher), and BG can still be effective against robots (browning and rocket launcher), but you're generally gonna want to be using the designated weapon against the designated enemy.

And as a last resort, you could always tone the difficulty down to easy or edit the mutant actors to be pitiful sobs who can't do squat.

P.S. Play it on CTB, its more fun.
 
Worthwhile

I bought FOT right when it came out in 2001, and quit playing it pretty early on for a couple of reasons. First, I was not running it on a decent machine. Secondly, I was under the impression the game would have more roleplaying elements than it actually did. Finally, as anyone who purchased the game early may recall, it was incredibly buggy, even after that big first patch that came out. So I put it away and did not think about it until installing it on my current machine a few weeks back.

I gave it a whirl late one night, and I think what hooked me first and foremost was a sense of being able to sate my Fallout nostalgia. Here was some new Fallout that I could play that had the look and feel, if not the depth. However, as I got into it, I began to appreciate these huge maps I could negotiate and maneuver into. I liked the idea of having to plot assaults, picking and choosing my battles, and trying my damndest to squeeze every good outcome I could out of every objective.

I started off with traditional FO turn-based, but as I got into the game, I became more comfortable with the controls and made the switch to CTB, which made the game even more fun.

I am about eight or so missions into the game, and greatly enjoying it. I have just hit mutant-land, so I suspect some of your complaints may be coming my way, but I am pretty confident that the game will win through for me.

One question, though - did Micro Forte fold or something? Why is it that the patches stopped and some of the major problems I have seen talked about on the site remain unaddressed by the company?

Hopefully, they do not prove to be too debilitating. Right now, I am enjoying the game and I am glad things worked out the way they did. God knows if I simply had to wait for FO3, it would have been hard and perhaps fatal if FO3 turns out to be garbage. At least now I know I have three good FO games to play.
 
The game does take a quantum leap forward in difficulty at Jefferson. There are a couple things you need to plan for in advance.

1) get 2 squaddies trained up on big guns, you'll probably be able to get a SAW or two from a random mutant enounter, and you should have a rocket launcher already. If you can't find 'em (yeah right) go ahead and buy an M60 from the quartermaster, which you can use until you score a SAW.

2) use the APC like it's your best friend. Have someone with good repair skills inside it, repairing it as you crawl along. It can do amazing things on the Jefferson map, like crossing rivers (at one point) and driving over trenches. Whenever you leave the APC, spread out your ops team to avoid the "burst miss effect" (where the mutie burst-fires, misses the target, but the game gives a 100% hit on someone near the target)

3) get the sniper rifles. There are, IIRC, three of them on this level. Bring at least two sharpshooters who can use 'em so you can get 1st hits from extreme range and piss off the muties. They're dug in, but they can be goaded into making stupid mistakes.

4) remember your orders! Your CO specifically told you not to do something, and if you have any doubts about your squad, just don't do it, unless you have a peculiar fascination with the gibbing animations.

5) consider timing your arrival at Jefferson to begin in darkness, to cut down on the mutants' effective range and accuracy. Feed your guys with the sniper rifles Voodoo (aka Sniper Crack).

After Jefferson, the other mutant levels don't get much harder.
 
The game does take a quantum leap forward in difficulty at Jefferson. There are a couple things you need to plan for in advance.
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Thanks for confirming what I suspected, both about the difficulty, and about how a first time player would have no way to anticipate the problem and know what to do. This problem seems to require starting the entire campaign over with a big guns oriented team from the beginning. Strange - the wallthroughs I have peeked at since I stopped playing always seemed to emphasize teams of snipers. Oh well. I can't stand campaigns where you have to know what to do from the first scenario in order to have a chance much later on. Homeworld was like that too.
 
OK, I did a little checking, and it turns out that St. Louis is the mission with the APC. When I said "quantum leap forward in difficulty at Jefferson" I meant to say it gets harder at St. Louis which comes before Jefferson. All those tips I mentioned earlier apply to the St. Louis mission. Jefferson isn't much harder, but you do need sneaky snipers and a heavy weapons-capable team.

a first time player would have no way to anticipate the problem and know what to do.
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True, but this is often the case with the FO:T missions. Just wait til you get to Kansas City! In general, after some random mutant encounters and a trip to St. Louis, you should've gotten the idea that big guns are useful.

This problem seems to require starting the entire campaign over with a big guns oriented team from the beginning.
Click to expand...

No, it's not necessarily that serious. You can start over from your last bunker save, if you've been rotating new recruits through your squad. You may or may not already know this, but once you get a new recruit, you put him in your squad and then right back into the pool, so s/he keeps up with the rest of your group on XP. Then, they level up with you and you can (if you're careful) pick some of their perqs and spend their skill points to develop them for later.

OK, I'm going to give you a couple tips on how to rebuild your squad to do Jefferson. First, you have access to plenty of metal armor before Jefferson, plundered if possible and purchased where necessary. Might as well use it, except on your scouts where the loss to stealth is a factor. In Jefferson, you start getting environmental armor, which is some decent equipment, but you need to survive until then.

Next, you need to have two scouts, two snipers, two heavy weapons specs, at least one medic, and a traps guy. Repairman and locksmith are optional in this one, grenadier is optional but very useful. That's 8, maybe 9 or 10 skills slots to fill. Of course, you know how to combine roles by now. Naturally, if you don't have any big guns guys in your current squad, you have to go to the recruits pool.

Look for the big guns tag. Brian and Jax are available pretty much from the start, and if you haven't been keeping tabs on them, they probably have quite a few skill points to spend by now. Brian is "well-rounded" w/sneak tagged, Jax does better damage but his EW tag is a waste in the early game. Next up is Stein, an interesting character with potential to cover big guns and medic. Not a bad choice at all, if he's available.

If you have enough charisma and rank -- I'm not entirely sure how the system works -- there are a couple more guys to consider. Stoma is a lousy choice IMHO, until you mutate him away from bruiser to fast shot. Gunners need enough AP to get the job done, and Stoma doesn't have it out of the box. However, if you can recruit Junior Knights before Jefferson, check out Malice. Melee won't be too useful, but he's got a high traps skill, and could be a potential replacement for your current demolitions expert. If you give him the Gain Strength perq, he can use a Browning M2 w/o power armor or drugs.

Another recruit you get early on who can use the M2 is Trevor. Unfortunately, his growth in this area is stunted because he doesn't have the big guns tag. However, he is a competent grenadier, and if you scout around in the wasteland a bit you can probably get him up to level 12 before Kansas City at least, altho Jefferson would be a bit of a stretch. Until then, give him the CAWS and a mess of frag grenades, and watch him rack up the kills. Save some skill points from level 10-11 to use on big guns after the Tag perq.

When you get to Jefferson, clear out the building to your SE first. Then get to work on the fortifications next to the train station. The scouter can help you with this job. Then just proceed methodically around the map, using the scouter to draw out opponents and get past hard points to launch attacks from the rear where possible. There are several obstacles a persistent well-positioned sniper can remove from a distance on this map, and encirclements are a possibility too.
 
I did Jefferson over the weekend. I didn't really do big guns myself. My party going in was:

Me (Pilot/energy weapons) I had no energy weapons so I basically stayed close to utilize my leader perk, and had my trusty M16.

Stitch - small arms, equipped with a CAWS.

Brian - small arms, equipped with the jackhammer (shotgun).

Riddick - Unarmed, equipped with a power fist.

Rebecca - equipped with, I think by this time, the sniper rifle which is the real difference maker in the game.

PipBoy - equipped with 7.62 FAL (rather useless at this point).

I'm at Great Bend mission now, which is where my investment in energy weapons will (I hope) pay off. Very enjoyable game, I hate to see it end., but it does seem to be getting to the point where I will soon be the Six Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
 
Well if you've already got Pipboy and Riddick, no wonder you didn't use big guns in Jefferson! Question about this, tho:

Me (Pilot/energy weapons) I had no energy weapons so I basically stayed close to utilize my leader perk, and had my trusty M16.
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In St. Louis you can get the Enfield XL-70E; if you're using 5.56 ammo and small arms, why would you pick the M16 over the Enfield? That thing can shred an armored supermutant with one burst, which I've never seen happen with the M16.
 
No way, I'm playing at Normal, Not Turn-Based, and I Can Save...

And I think its perfect really.. Not too Easy, but not too Hard.. Just as I want it..

We are 3 in my squad.. HeavyGunner, Sniper, CombatMedic .. Using this method, u should not have a problem..!


phimseto, Does it really work playing with that big Group??
How can u afford to supply all your members with ammo? ..
Since there is no merchant who get new ammot etc.., the merchants in the BOS Bunkers only sell items u have sold to them, and a new stuff sometimes..
Im also at the Great Bend now btw..
 
Well, I'm not phismeto, but if you think his group sounds big you should check out one of mine...

http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=get&tp=124238
http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=get&tp=124239

In answer to your question though, 7.62 is abundant as hell and useful through most of the game. Likewise, you can end up with an assload of MFC providing you kill all the turrets in preoria. As for the other stuff simply don't have every1 using the same gun-if every1 in your group uses the browning from St. Louis on, well, there's simply not enough ammo for that. But, there's enough to keep 1 person supplied throughout the game, or 2-3 people if you hoard up until the robots. Last mission every1 can use them b/c there are 2 turrets w/ 2500 rounds each. But just vary which weapons ppl use-2 ppl on browning/rocket, 3 on laser weapons, and 1 w/ a shotgun (solid/electrical) and every1 has enough ammo b/c they're not all using the same.

And as an aside to organism, the M16 has the best burst range of any small guns, and a far better one than the Enfield's, which is essentially burst shotgun range. And shooting at long range with mutants is generally a smarter idea than close.
 
haha! Nice... U got a whole damn army there ;)

Well, personally, I dont think its fun with that big squad..
I would prefer playing alone, or Max 1 more in my team, but that would be alittle too tuff in Tactics I think.

Btw, is it possible to get a Super Mutant in ur Party?
I encountered the "Brothers Grimm" - Encounter.
And the Encounter-page on this site said u could get a Mutant in ur Recruit pool ..? =)
 
Heh. If you're asking that question then this is kinda gonna be a spoiler, but yes, you can get mutants in your party. There are actually 7 possible super mutant recruits, 5 normal and both the brothers grimm. However, most of them are not particularly appealing, but, Jim Grimm is the best damn heavy gunner in the game w/out question-2 AP bursts from a browning is thanks very much. There are a couple others that are passable, but I'll let you make those decisions for yourself. Just so you know, all mutant recruits are not available until the start of bunker delta, and the brothers grimm may not be available for a little later depending on your rank (they have upper paladin rank).
 
I've only played FOT all the way through it once, and I have some tips that would help the first time player do the same.

Money:

  • -Collect all the junk you can possibly carry on each level. All of your squaddies should be near or at max inventory weight. Many a mission I've had ALL my squaddies overburdened so much that they were all on the verge of not being able to move at all at the end of a mission.

    -You should have one squaddie have a high barter skill so you get the most bang for your buck when you sell your junk at the base. Have your other squaddies transfer ALL of the squads junk to the person with the high barter skill AFTER you move him within talking distance of the equipment guy.

    -Save up most of the money you earn to buy as much of the best available armor as possible for your squad. As soon as x number of the next level of Armor becomes available, sell x number of your worst armor and then buy the good armor. Only spend you money on ammo for you guns, or better guns if you think it’s worth it. (I find AK47's a very versitile rifle in FOT)

    -Always put your very best armor on yourself, because although you want all of your squaddies to live, your death is the only one that causes game over in most cases.

Weapons matchups:

  • -Humans/Ghouls: The burst mode for SMG's or Rifles is the best way to kill Raiders, Reavers, Ghouls, Beastmasters, and Ghouls although this uses too much ammo most of the time. Having two or more squaddies open up a can of burst fire on a raider is like the finger of death squishing the head of your victim. This tactic is good for a room full of enemies and you need to kill as fast as possible before you are killed. A better tactic in most cases is have all of your squaddies close together and have them all single-fire on one enemy at a time. This conserves ammo and is fairly effective. When dealing with Deathclaws, its a kill-as-fast-as-you-can situation and your probably going to want a squddies burst on a Baby Deathclaw and 2 or 3 Squaddies burst on an adult Deathclaw.

    -Super Mutants: When you first fight them, they will seem invincible. ALWAYS fight super mutants from inside a vehicle, or you will be taken apart. When you first fight them, you will probably only have automatic rifles in your squad, so set everyone to burst, load them into an APC or whatever vehicle you have, and just let loose until the mutie is dead. Rocket fire will damage your vehicle quite quickly, and so you NEED to have a mechanic for this tactic to work. Expect to have to repair your vehicle every 3 or 4 super mutant kills. While a good pilot for the vehicle, is nice, it's not necessary, as you're not trying to drive fast so much as you're just trying to use the vehicle as really heavy armor. Heavy weapons work best (ESPECIALLY rocket launchers) against Super Mutants, but I find that after a couple of missions into the Super Mutant section of the game you squaddies should all have really good Small Guns skills, and you can therefore soften up a Super Mutant when you see one with sniper-style single shots before it even gets close and you can finish up with a burst from 2 or 3 Squaddies when it gets close.

    -Robots: It took me a couple of missions to figure this out(More like I really wanted to keep using my Assault Rifles, because everyone in my squad had such a kick ass Small guns Skill by this point), but the only way to effectively damage the robots is with energy weapons. Nothing else hurts them enough to be worth it. Having all your squad members single fire a robot at a distance with assault rifles for a really long time, or have them all burst it close up will be good enough to kill a single robot, but they never come in cases of 1 when you are fighting them.

Good equipment:

  • -Armor: You will almost always have available 1 Armor of level X(leather for example), 4 Armor of level X+1(Metal Armor for example), and 1 Armor of level X+2(Power armor). Sometimes you will have 2 of X+1 and 4 of X. Always give yourself the best available armor, and if you have two, your best buddy (Usually the medic, which is usually Stitch) as well.

    -Weapons: AK47's I find are the best automatic rifles that exist in numbers that can equip your whole squad. I find they are the best assault rifles period, but that’s just me (Probably has a lot to do with the fact that the ammo for it is so common). When you start fighting Super Mutants, you will want one of your Squaddies to be Mr. Rocket launcher. Also, try to get Trevor or someone like him who is a grunt, but can handle grenades too.

    Do not underestimate the value of having you entire squad, including yourself, using the same type of ammo. If one squaddie runs out, you can just redivide the ammo up evenly, with a little bit extra for your character.

Squaddies:

  • -For me, my character was the Barter guy, and the Mechanic, another guy is the Medic, and the other 4 are all around grunts. Try to make one of your grunts handle a rocket launcher decently (Brian in my case), another to handle grenades (Trevor in my case), and another for a pilot (Jo in my case).

    -Don't even bother playing with a squad size of less than 5 or 6, the game's too hard that way.

Hope that helps make the game easier!
I too found it hard, but very fun once I got my strategy down.
And remember, there's no shame in reloading your game every time one of your squaddies dies.
 
For the most part calculon gave good advice, but take it from someone who has played the game through 3+ times (no flames please), that big guns is the way to go. Rockets+brownings kill robots faster than laser/plasma rifles. The gattling laser is nice, but the browning still does more damage at longer range.
Basically just to divide the game up for you weaponwise
up through beastlords-all small guns (ak47s)
up through reavers-approx 1/2 small guns (sniper rifles), 1/2 big guns (m249 SAWs)
for the bots-approx 1/2 big guns (browning m2s, rocket launchers), 1/2 energy weapons (laser rifle/sunbeam gattling)
I would honestly recommend having all big guns vs the bots but its about all you can do to keep 3, 4 (tops-unless you're ultraconservative/efficient) people in .50cal ammo and rockets. Ideally the way to go is to tag energy weapons on some of your small guns recruits (hint:even though they'll be using small guns for most of the game, don't take that skill above 150-go ahead and start switching over to energy.
Small guns really start to lose effectiveness vs mutants because that is when your opponents start to have decent armor. Even the vaunted sniper rifle takes infinitely longer to kill an armored mutie than a M60 or SAW would.
However, you can keep 1-2 people in small guns throughout the game thanks to burst shotguns, which while having crappy range, work well. Solid slug shells are adequate vs bots, and electric shells absolutely destroy them (extremely weak to that type of damage). You can stock about 1 small gun shotgunner and 1 using the guass for the bots but there's not enough for your whole squad using small guns, so the rest need to be using big guns/energy weapons.
 
Heres what Ive found works best in Craptics.


Beggining to begining of first super mutie mission.
Grab as many hunting riffles as possible for all your squadies. Give your person a hunting rifle and a shotgun.
use your squad as a sniper group. Move slow and let them use the raqnge of the hunting rifle to their benefit. If the enemy gets close, move your person out front and switch to a shotgun.

Ok, starting with the super muties, you CANT go head to head til you get better weapons/armor. So either use the APC as mobile armor or use the following tactic.

Break your squad into two groups: Fire team/sniper.

Fireteam: The ENTIRE squad minus the sniper (with the medic to the rear). Arm them all with hunting rifles. and have the ones positionedi n the from have combat shotguns (1-2 using SAWs once you get them) as a second weapon.

Sniper: Arm the sniper with a hunting rifle and a CAWS (sniper riffle/CAWS once you get one.)
When you can see the enamys in the open, snipe them from MAX range (0% if you have line of sight) to get them to chase you.

Once you get the mutie to engage: Return the sniper to the fireteam, and let the massed hunting riffles do their longrance job. If the mutie gets to close, switch the sniper to the CAWS and the SAW guys to their SAWs (needless to say, position them so they wont burst eachother to death.)

This should work on most enemys. If theyre hiding behind something, dont rush them. Forcefire nades to their general area and have EVERYONE ready to open fire. Just remember that with mutants DONT hesitate to retreat when nessacary (just leave a CAWS or combatshotgun guy on burst around a corner as a suprise)


Reavers, due to their heavy weapons, should be treated like mutants but with more hiding and retreating as nessacary.

Robots: Heres where it gets intersting. Theyre open mainly to energy attacks.

If you can get shotguns with EMP shells, have one squadie be a shotgun guy (should have a PancorJackhamer by now). Have your best small guns person using a gauss rifle if you manage to find one. Its the best sniper rifle in the game and extremly effective. Have the rest of the squad equiped with plasma rifles (or laser rifles if there isnt enough plasma). Use the pulse rifle and the reaver EMP weapon as well once you get them.
When facing behomeaths and other large bots, run and make them come after you, droping mines along the way.

If there is enough room to do so, have your RPG guy pop shots occasionly as you fallback.
Once its heavily damaged, have your shotgun guy burst with EMP.
 
u just build the standard fragger.
6/9/6/2/9/10/6 (including gifted + kamikaze)
do a few super mutant encounters and you should get SAWs early.

If Small guns are tagged, u should have sufficient accuracy from them by time you finish 3 missions regardless of int and start pumping heavy guns ASAP (if not tagged). I spent some time hunting for xp as well and the moment i reach St Louis, i have Jax and my char with at least 100% in BGs with Trevor and Sitch around 70 - 80%. It was so much of a breeze that i could use my main to assault the base alone. He had high sneak though so was not ripped by the guards with those DU 50 Cal.

of course this is possible if u have plenty of time at hand and patience.

Do the same for Reavers. Hunt for them and stock up on a few energy weapons like plasma rifles and the EMP grenades or even the M79.
In combat they are pretty much weaklings when compared to muties. (if u taken kamikaze + 2x Bonus ranged dam that is) Its quite easy to kill them with 1 burst of a SAW and about 3 - 5 unaimed sniper shots or 1 - 2 eye aimed laser shots.

All those RE hunting should put you one step ahead as well since my guys all had bonus ROF before Great Bend. If u dont do RE hunting, you wont get Bonus ROF until after Great Bend.

Oh yeah if u play with Kamikaze, dont be afraid to retreat like Psycho Sniper said, with Enviro armor, i only had 10 AC. So turning away does help me alot.
 
And remember to SAVE OFTEN.

I just finished the first mutie mission, and got back tot he bunker.

I was bartering away all the SAWs I had gotten when my cat steped onto my laptop.

She managed to trigger forcefire into the supply guy, which caused a massive fight that ended with me nearly clensing the bunker of life. before the power armord guys got into it.



Moral of story: Save Often.


Now ive got to beat the damned mission again.
 
yeah use the quick saves for missions and reserve 1 slot for bunker saves between missions ! I hate it when some relatives of my visit my home and their kids override my quicksaved games. It happened more than once.
 
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